


Man of Mysteries

by Evenlodes_Friend



Category: Inspector Morse & Related Fandoms, Inspector Morse (TV), Lewis (TV)
Genre: Death, Grief, Happy Ending, Love, M/M, Memories, Morse's Jag, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 19:44:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5218415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evenlodes_Friend/pseuds/Evenlodes_Friend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robbie Lewis is a man of mysteries, but he is not the only one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man of Mysteries

**Author's Note:**

> I found this old thing lurking in a file I hadn't looked at in a year, and thought you might like to read it. I'd been thinking about the car for a long time, and it has resurfaced in my writing recently, so it made sense to dig this out and revisit it.
> 
> Published with thanks to the members of the James Hathaway Appreciation Society.

 

            ‘Well, he was such a miserable old sod sometimes,’ Laura laughs. ‘I called him Inspector _Mouse_ when I first met him, do you remember?’

            Lewis laughs. ‘He didn’t go much on that, I can tell you!’

            Hathaway beside him, face bright, full of delight. Lewis doesn’t see him looking like that often enough.

            Lewis still feels that pang in his chest when he’s mentioned, his old guvnor. Still thinks of him, lying cold and alone, on that slab in the darkness, skin like parchment.

            Lifts his pint to his lips, tastes the bitterness.

            Laura gets up, gathering her jacket. ‘Well, I’d better get back. The dead will keep, but the paperwork won’t. Enjoy the rest of your lunch, boys.’

            They watch her brisk clip as she crosses the lawn.

            ‘That’s a woman who doesn’t hang around,’ Lewis muses.

            ‘You’d better catch up then,’ Hathaway tells him, sipping his orange juice. ‘Otherwise she’ll get away.’

            ‘Nah.’ Lewis shakes his head. ‘Not meant to happen, her and me.’

            ‘Really? Why not?’

            ‘Reasons.’ Lewis studies the geraniums, bright heads nodding in the warm breeze.

            ‘You’re such a man of mystery,’ Hathaway quips.

            ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

            In the car on the way back to the station, Lewis takes a wrong turn, then realises he’s miles away, and they’re heading somewhere he has been avoiding thinking about.

            ‘Anything you want to tell me, sir?’

            ‘You said I was a man of mystery,’ he quips.

            ‘Intending to enlighten me?’

            ‘Don’t like secrets. Come across enough of them in this job, don’t we. And they never do anyone any good.’

            ‘I suppose not.’

            Lad staring out of the window, up at the honey stone of colleges and grand mansions. Far from home, and yet not, Lewis thinks. How many secrets are you keeping, James Hathaway?

* * *

 

            Yellow. Canary yellow, in fact. Or perhaps bilious yellow, if you really want to describe it accurately, he thinks as he walks into the office, tall lad loping behind, his shadow. All the placards, billboards, containers; bright yellow.

            ‘Mr Lewis! It’s not your day today.’

            Dora behind the counter, bright smile, always welcoming. Glances over at the lad, takes him in appreciatively, all six foot three inches. Not that anyone _doesn’t_ look at the lad that way. They can’t help it. A tower of beauty. Even Lewis can tell that. Blonde Adonis. Wishes he knew some fancy poetry to describe it, but can’t remember any.

Dora doesn’t need poetry. It’s all in her look. Hooks the key off the rack behind the counter with long, capable fingers.

            ‘You probably know the way yourself by now,’ she says.

            ‘Nah. Still need Dora the Explorer to show me,’ he replies, following her out into the warehouse.

            ‘Dora the Explorer?’ James hasn’t watched any CBBC.

            ‘Our Dora knows this place like the back of her hand,’ Lewis tells him. ‘Every nook and cranny. Every light bulb and spiders web.’

            Knows Hathaway will shudder at the mention.

            ‘No one can find anything around here without me,’ she laughs.

            Lewis can believe it. Place is so big their voices don’t even echo off the mile-high roof. Long corridors between metal containers, rented, names pasted to the locked doors. Following Dora’s lemon yellow fleece along the narrow paths between, out of a side door. Rows of garages here, and bigger units. Serious storage, this.

            Hathaway close at his side, like always. Perhaps he doesn’t want to get lost.

            Dora stops by a garage with a green sticker on it, ‘LEWIS’ in sloping capitals printed in the name box. Flourishes her key like Ali Baba. The metal doors clank as they open. She fishes inside the threshold for the light switch, givess the key to Lewis, still warm from her hand.

            ‘Don was in on Saturday,’ she mentions. ‘Can’t seem to leave it alone.’

            ‘I told him not to bother more than once a month,’ Lewis tells her. Can’t keep the exasperation out of his voice. Fondness too, though.

            ‘He likes to keep her smart, he says,’ she tells him. ‘Told me the old bastard would come back and haunt him if he didn’t!’

            Lewis laughs, shrugs. ‘Yeah, wouldn’t put it past him. Anyway, thanks for this.’

            ‘Any time.’ Another appreciative glance at Hathaway.

            They watch her stride off, back the way they’ve come, another woman moving at a brisk clip.

            ‘You’re in there, if you fancy,’ Lewis tells the lad, who shrugs, non-committal as ever. Talk about man of mysteries. ‘Come on then.’

            Cold in the garage, smells of damp concrete and engine oil. Car polish too, the sort he used to use on the old Cortina he had when he met Val. His first car, a Mark II. You don’t forget your first car, any more than you forget your first love. Maybe they’re the same thing.

            Lewis fiddles with the straps and ties, pulls back the dust sheet. Burgundy paint shines. Don’s right. Morse would haunt him if he didn’t keep the old girl looking this good.

            ‘It’s beautiful,’ Hathaway breathes. Touches the gleaming chrome cat on the bonnet, the leather of the roof.

            Lewis stands back, admires her, hands on hips, satisfied. Still as good as new.

            ‘Don used to service her for Morse,’ he tells the lad. ‘He left her to me, but he left Don a sum for looking after her so well all those years. Think he feels obliged to keep coming back and giving her a shine in return for the money.’

            The lad awestruck, stroking her curves like a woman’s.

            ‘How can you bear to keep her in here?’

            Doesn’t understand what she means to Lewis. All the memories.

            ‘More a case of can’t bear to drive her. Besides, she’s _his_ car, really. Hardly ever let me get behind the wheel.’

            ‘And yet he left her to you.’

            ‘I think he thought it was like handing on the batten. He was my inspector, seemed to think that when I made the grade, I had to have one. His old guvnor had one too, used to let him drive it. He told me once that’s why he wanted one. All the villains then had Jags, so you had to have one if you wanted to catch them. Said it was a cracker, too, old Fred Thursday’s Jag.’

            ‘Like some kind of insignia of office. Reminds me of the masons.’

            ‘Don’t mention the masons around this old girl, James. She’s like to bite your hand off!’

            Hathaway frowns, not getting it.

            ‘Long story.’

            ‘Tell me.’

            Leans on the front wing, looks at his face in the claret mirror of the bonnet. Remembers.

            ‘There was this psycho called Hugo de Vries, took against Morse, decided he was going to ruin him. He had a thing about ‘The Magic Flute.’

            ‘The Opera?’

            ‘Yeah. All that stuff about magic and masons. Evil bastard. He vandalised the car, scratched masonic insignia all over it. Morse was beside himself.’

            ‘Great way to get to someone, though. Destroying what they love most.’

            ‘That was only the start of it. He put an incendiary device in Morse’s record collection. Hundreds of quid’s worth of recordings up in smoke. Morse would have gone with it, too, if I hadn’t pulled him out.’

            ‘Make a bit of a habit of pulling your colleagues out of fires, don’t you,’ he smiles. Fondness in his eyes. Thanks.

            ‘S’ppose I do.’ Lewis runs his hands over the door handle, lets the past fill his head.

            ‘I remember him sitting in the back of the ambulance after, wrapped in this horrible orange blanket like a lost kid. This wobbly voice coming out of him. Where’s Lewis? I want Lewis.’

            They stand there, enveloped in the past.

            Then Lewis pulls off the rest of the dust sheet and says, ‘Get in.’

            ‘You sure?’

            ‘Yes.’

            That soft click/clunk of the heavy doors shutting, so familiar.

            ‘Quality,’ the lad says, running his fingertips over the polished walnut dash.

            Lewis curls his fingers around the steering wheel, so cool and narrow compared with the soft-touch plastic one in his new BMW. Memories.

            ‘After he died, I used to come and sit in her. It brought him closer, I suppose. And after Val died-‘

            Should he tell the lad? No more secrets. Secrets only cause trouble. Has that weird feeling in the pit of his stomach again. The end of the day soon. The lad will go home. He’ll be left on his own on the sofa. Doesn’t want to be alone anymore. Wants to know he’s not the only one. Wants to know that whatever this is, it’s not just him.

            ‘After Val died,’ he starts again. ‘I used to come and sit here. Thought about running a pipe from the exhaust. But there was Lynn and Mark. I couldn’t. But I thought about it.’

            Stillness. The sense of the leather headlining bearing down on their tall heads. The dashboard clock still ticking, loudly. Don must have set the time right last time he was here. Remembers the ugly old radio hanging like a scrotum inside the glove compartment. Morse didn’t want it messing up the lines of the dash. Wonders if it still works.

            ‘Secrets,’ James says. He’s sobered by Lewis’s confession. Has that little crease in the side of his mouth that he always gets when he is about to say something important, divulge his own secret. Man of mysteries. Lewis sits tight, waits. Whatever it is will come in its own time.

            It’s a long time coming.

            ‘I don’t do that anymore,’ Lewis says, to fill the gap.

They sit side by side, shoulder to shoulder, staring out through the rounded windscreen, the garage door, at the unit opposite. Lewis wonders what is inside it. Maybe stolen goods. Maybe hydroponics for growing cannabis. Maybe some old lady’s dressing table and wardrobe from a house clearance. Heard tell of a man once who used his unit as a workshop for mending antique watches. His hobby. Spent hours there. Died there. Wonders how long it would take for Dora to find him if he did top himself in here. Not for the first time.

            ‘His name was Ian,’ the lad says suddenly, out of the blue. Lewis doesn’t have to work out what he means. ‘Father Ian Cowan. He was twenty three years older than me. He had china blue eyes and a smile like the sunrise.’

            ‘What happened?’

            Doesn’t look at him. Still stares ahead, lost in memories. ‘I made a rather gauche pass at him one night.’

            ‘And he turned you down?’

            ‘No, actually, he reciprocated rather enthusiastically.’ Crests of his cheeks a bit pink. Eyes a little glossy. ‘Those were the happiest six days of my life.’

            ‘You got found out?’

            ‘God caught up with us. We had to choose. And he chose God.’

            ‘I’m sorry.’

            Hathaway looks at him, eyes bright and sad. ‘It is what it is. Besides, I wouldn’t have met _you_ if he’d stayed.’

            Lewis smiles. ‘Not the same, though, is it?’

            ‘Isn’t it? You make me happy. That’s all that matters.’

            The clock ticks. Ticking their lives away. Feels like it’s too late. Feels like it will be too late if he doesn’t say something now. What to say, though? How can he say what he doesn’t understand?

            ‘You make me happy too,’ is what he manages.

            The smell of the leather seating and Hathaway’s aftershave. The echo of Morse’s cologne too. Wonders what that was?   The same smell, all those years. Stronger when there was a woman, outweighed the smell of beer and whisky. Later on, less cologne and more whisky. Could end up the same way himself. Nearly did, after Val died. Too many drams. Going to bed every night in a blur of misery and grief. How did he survive it? The kids. And the lad. James doesn’t know what he did. Just being there. Why did he choose Lewis? Why did he ask to be Lewis’s bagman? So many better opportunities than a washed-up old Geordie trying to make up for losing it after his old lady died.

            ‘Why did you do it?’

            ‘Do what?’

            ‘Choose me? When I came back from the BVI, why did you choose me?’

            ‘Because you’re you.’

            ‘Right man of mystery, you are.’

            A shrug, detected out of the corner of Lewis’s eye. ‘China blue eyes and a smile like the sunrise. Let’s just say I felt like I was coming home.’

            They sit some more. Nearby, voices. Dora’s laugh. A man walks past with a big cardboard box in his arms. Heavy face. Sad eyes.

            This is where people hide away the things they don’t want to look at, Lewis decides. The memories they can’t face anymore. Maybe it’s a place where they find things too.

            ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he tells the lad.

            ‘You don’t have to say anything.’

            ‘But I want you to know.’

            ‘So?’

            ‘You mean the world to me.’

            Long pale fingers reach out, wrap around his, round the steering wheel, round his heart.

            ‘I don’t know what this is,’ he tells the lad. ‘I don’t know if I can. I just need you to know.’

            ‘I know,’ James says, gently. ‘I know.’

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Lewis didn't pull Morse out of the fire in 'Masonic Mysteries'. It was the PC on duty outside his flat who had the privelige. Neither did Lewis witness Morse's little tantrum in the ambulance afterwards. But I always thought it was a shame he wasn't there to see how much the old man relied on him for his emotional equilbrium, so I changed it, for purely selfish reasons.
> 
> Weirdly, Morse's Jag has her own website with lots of car porn! http://www.morsejaguar.co.uk
> 
> The yellow refers to The Big Yellow Storage Company, which has branches all over the UK, if you aren't familiar with it. Lewis and Hathaway's local would be in Horsepath, Oxford.


End file.
